The Sharon Fieldhouse in Alleghany County, near Clifton Forge, Virginia, designed and constructed by 3rd-year Virginia Tech architecture students in the design/buildLAB, has been selected as the American-Architects Building of the Year for 2016. The project received more than 15% of the thousands of votes cast by readers for their favorite Building of the Week featured on American-Architects.com last year.

Photo: © Jeff Goldberg/ESTO

Former Professors of Practice Marie and Keith Zawistowski led the design/buildLAB. The 2013-14 design/buildLAB student team, including Landon Williams, Molly Vaughan, Mitchell August, Ryan Myers, Julia Vasquez, Xiao Fu, Ellie Burns, Forrest Bibeau, Mykayla Fernandes, Kellen McGinley, John Iaconis, Chanel Carter-Harris, Barbara Dior, Nancy Redenius, and Tom Powers, designed and built the Sharon Fieldhouse. The 2014-15 design/buildLAB student team, including Mary Covert, Luke Dale, Anuja Das, Leah Hodgson, Lauryn Jean, Kevin Lee, Lily Zhuoran Liu, Robert Riggs, Kayla Sloan, Hunter Stephenson, Casey Walker, Sarah Walker, and Sophia Hyuan Xie, designed and built the second phase of the project, Sharon Fields. Marie and Keith Zawistowski, principals of their own design-build firm, onSITE, are now based in France, where they are continuing the work of the design/buildLAB.

This is the second time that a design/buildLAB project has been selected as the U.S. Building of the Year: The Masonic Amphitheatre Project received the same honor in 2012.